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by The Romani Cultural and Arts Company

The Romani Cultural and Arts Company will be delivering three training workshops in three cities, focussing upon the Romani and Travelling people in Britain and their cultures, histories, languages, as a solid foundation to understanding the present communities. The workshops will deliver critical knowledge to professionals, policy-makers, and practitioners in local government, housing, accommodation, health, justice and education services; how to develop a respectful relationship with communities, approaches to constructing a positive dialogue around accommodation and ‘stopping-places’, to supporting better access for Romani and Travellers to health and wellness provision, to strengthening schooling, to raising attainment and improving elective home education, leading to increasing employment opportunities.

The situation for Romani and Traveller communities looks set to become more and more uncertain, as the protections offered under European legislation, conventions and frameworks will probably be rescinded. Show-people, Fair-gound families, Circus-folk and Bargees are likely to face significant changes in their businesses and operations too, with the post-Brexit legal framework. The overall social, economic and cultural impact of the departure from the EU will be especially deep upon these communities. The Romani Cultural & Arts Company has the best track record in the UK of delivering effective training in working with Romani and Traveller people, having carried out a range of training courses, international conferences, arts exhibitions and cultural symposia, schools workshops and heritage projects with Gypsy, Roma, Traveller, show-people, Circus-folk, Fairground families and Bargees, across Wales and Europe.

The Cardiff workshop will focus upon the current policy initiatives associated with the ‘Well-being of Future Generations Act (Wales, 2015)’ have left behind the Romani and Traveller communities of Wales, particularly in terms of the ‘Well-being Assessments’ carried out by the Public Services Boards established by the Act and the recent review of these by Netherwood, Flynn and Lang (2017) for the Future Generations Commissioner, Sophie Howe. These crucial processes have ignored the needs of Romani and Traveller people in ‘planning today for a better tomorrow’, with inadequate consultation of the present and future needs of Gypsy, Roma, Traveller communities, insufficient sustainable development principles being applied to these needs, resulting in Romani and Traveller people being missed in the most important opportunity for improving the public sector’s delivery of provision rooted in the everyday reality of their lives and ensuring little benefit for the well-being of future Romani and Traveller generations.

Our training in Cardiff, in December 2018, will address these critical lacunae in government policy and practice, providing an opportunity to rectify, for local and national government policy-makers and service-providers, this absence of data and content and how to include the most marginal and excluded groups in Wales today.